Congo:

Travelling Performances

Theatrically and operatically it’s been a travelling five days in (and out) of London. I’ve already reported on going to the Congo when Maureen and I saw A Season in the Congo on Saturday (Young Vic Theatre). I’ll be talking about the Congo in its latest incarnation a...

A Season in the Congo

My new book Dark Lands is coming out next week and my travels for the Democratic Republic of the Congo chapter took me to Kinshasa, Kisangani and Lubumbashi, all of which feature in A Season in the Congo, currently running at the Old Vic theatre in London. Of course a...

How Many Countries?

Every now and then I bump into somebody who’s busy trekking around the world putting a ‘been there’ tick beside a list of every country in the world. You can have arcane arguments about what ‘been there’ means – is the airport transit lounge good enough? But the start...

Kinshasa in the Congo

Montreal is the 3rd largest French speaking city in the world, Paris the 2nd. Number 1? That’s Kinshasa, stop two on my Congo Democratic Republic excursion. As a degree of stability returns to much of the country, railway lines reopen and roads are improved (often fro...

Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

Jason Stearns’ book Dancing in the Glory of Monsters tries to unpick the story of ‘The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa.’ Clearly a near impossible task, because you’re still left fairly bemused at the end how all these events – from the Cold War to t...